Quiet hamlet the scene of police and residents brawl on Dec. 31

The name Yatton is probably unknown to the majority of Wellington County residents.

Located in the southwestern corner of Peel Township, it consisted of a one-room school, a store, and a post office from 1874 until 1915, all serving the surrounding farms.

The hamlet was a quiet one, located off main roads and away from railway tracks. A notable exception to the normal tranquillity took place on New Year’s Eve of 1888. John Owens, who farmed near Yatton on Concession 4, had been convicted and fined for selling alcohol contrary to the Scott Act. He did not pay the fine, and on the last day of 1888 the authorities came for him.

The Scott Act was a prohibition measure of the late 19th century. Its provisions allowed municipalities to vote themselves dry by popular plebiscite. After several years of agitation, temperance proponents persuaded county council to call a vote in Wellington County in 1885. To the surprise of many, the proposal carried, and Wellington County’s bar rooms, liquor stores, distilleries, and breweries closed on May 1, 1886.

A significant minority had opposed the Scott Act, and violations were widespread, with little enforcement of the law. A second vote county-wide vote, in 1889, reversed the decision, and liquor returned to the county.

John Owens, of Yatton was one of the few men convicted under the Scott Act during its three-year existence in Wellington County.

A magistrate fined him for selling liquor to a spotter, who was the sole witness to testify against him. Many people considered such convictions a violation of fair play. Owens was one of them. He refused to pay the fine.

A county constable, W.H. Heseltine, set out in a cutter from his home in Rothsay early on the morning of Dec. 31 of 1888 to arrest Owens and take him into custody for non-payment of the fine. He expected that there might be some difficulties, so he brought along his father, Jim Heseltine, also a county constable. The men arrived at the Owens residence in the afternoon. A neighbour named Michael O’Brien, watched the Heseltines, and suspected that they meant trouble for Owens.

O’Brien watched as the elder Heseltine skulked around to the back door of the house to nab the culprit should he attempt to flee.

W.H. Heseltine knocked at the front door. Members of the family told him that John was not in.

As he turned from the door, Heseltine caught a glimpse of John Owens in the barnyard. He and Heseltine recognized one another, and Owens realized at once the reason for Heseltine’s visit. He jumped the fence in a leap, and took refuge at the Rafferty residence next door.

In no mood for a game of hide-and-seek, young Heseltine strode to the Rafferty house, let himself in, seized Owens, and arrested him. Siding with his neighbour, Rafferty shoved Heseltine, permitting Owens to escape his grasp. The three men continued to scuffle for several minutes.

When Heseltine did not emerge from the house with his prisoner, Michael O’Brien, waiting outside, decided to intervene. He picked up a stone from the front of the house for a weapon, entered the house, immediately sized up the situation – and came to the aid of Owens, who was already proving difficult for Heseltine to control.

O’Brien rushed at Heseltine and struck him in the head three or four times. Heseltine showed resilience, refusing to let go of his prisoner. O’Brien then tried to gain control of Heseltine by thrusting his thumb into Heseltine’s mouth in order to force him to release Owens.

As they twisted and struggled, Owens spotted a poker near the stove. He picked it up and struck Heseltine in the head several times. Owens was not able to strike a decisive blow. He called on his young son, who had been watching, for help.

Young Owens stepped into an adjoining room and found a stout stick, about three feet long. He waited a few moments until he had a clear aim at Heseltine’s head. Then he landed a quick series of severe blows to Heseltine, causing cuts to his head and breaking his nose. Owens and his defenders picked up Heseltine and tossed him out the front door, locking him out against re-entry.

Badly outnumbered, Heseltine stumbled away from the Rafferty house to regroup his forces. Shortly after dark he was back, with his father for reinforcement, and made a second attempt to arrest Owens.

Somehow they managed to get into the house through the front door. The younger Heseltine spotted Owens upstairs, peeking around a corner. He strode to the staircase, but only managed a couple of the steps before he was felled with a blow to the head with a blunt instrument. Heseltine’s father, waiting by the door, thought it was a poker, wielded by Michael O’Brien.

Young Heseltine staggered a moment, and then began to fall backwards. His father rushed to him and cradled his body before he hit the floor. Owens and others in the household stood back and watched. Realizing he was hopelessly outnumbered, Heseltine helped his barely-conscious son out the door and into their cutter.

The head wound looked serious, and Jim W.H. Heseltine decided to go to Glen Allan for medical help for his son. Luckily, Dr. Lucy there was home. With the assistance of Dr. Cassidy, Dr. Lucy dressed the wounds. The doctors thought it unwise for Heseltine to travel any more, and they kept him in bed and under observation for two days.

That was the end of the Battle of Yatton, but repercussions continued for several weeks.

John Owens and his neighbour, Rafferty, decided to take a sudden brief vacation to escape arrest when the authorities returned. Rumours about W.H. Heseltine’s injuries circulated through the countryside. They feared that if his recovery went badly they would face homicide charges.

Michael O’Brien scoffed at the fears of Owens and Rafferty, and thought he was vindicated when nothing more happened for several days. His bravado was short lived. On the morning of Jan. 5, Jim Heseltine, backed up by several temporary constables, arrested O’Brien without incident.

A couple of hours later O’Brien was standing in front of Magistrate P.M. Lowes, who bound him over for trial at Guelph at the Spring Assizes.

Dr. Cassidy was present at the hearing to describe the injuries to Heseltine: a broken nose, lacerations to the throat, and nine wounds to the scalp. At the trial Michael O’Brien received a year in custody for his assault on W.H. Heseltine. He perhaps spent much of that time reflecting on his foolish intervention in a case that had nothing to do with him.

There were also charges against the others involved in the attempt to frustrate the course of justice, but there does not seem to be any surviving evidence of what happened to those cases.

John Owens does not seem to have tangled with the law again. Presumably, he concluded that his best course was to pay the fine, and not risk further confrontations with the legal system and its enforcers.

Four months after the Battle of Yatton, Wellington County ratepayers, by a majority of 1,600, voted to rescind the Scott Act, and liquor sales once again became legal in the county. The Owens case was one of the last cases, and certainly the most violent one, to be prosecuted under its provisions.

 

Stephen Thorning

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